My wife and I recently spent a week touring around Cornwall – somewhere we had spent many a summer in earlier times. We hadn’t been to that part of the UK for over 10 years and were looking forward to re-visiting some of our old haunts.
Though based in Perranporth, we spent most days travelling further afield to resorts on both the North and South Cornish coasts. Three things became apparent, and surprised us both, as we journeyed around.
Firstly, the resorts were much busier and more populous than we remembered, even though it was outside of the school holiday period. The throngs consisted mainly of retired people like us, visitors from Northern Europe, especially Germany, and younger couples with pre-school children and babies. Talking to friends who own accommodation in Cornwall, they have also noticed a significant increase in holiday activity since the Covid years. It seems that during the pandemic, when travel abroad was severely restricted, people had re-discovered venues at home.
Secondly, we were amazed how many people were accompanied by dogs, and often not just one pet but two or even three at once! On the beaches many of these dogs were allowed to run free – which concerned us with so many very young children around. On one occasion a child of no more than three years old, happily playing on the sand, was charged and knocked down by an unsupervised dog!
Furthermore, in the towns and villages many dogs were on those extending leads, which owners seem to prefer, and you had to have your wits about you to avoid getting tripped up or entangled. Apparently this is another consequence of the Covid years. Many people became dog owners for the first time, for both company during isolation and an excuse for taking daily exercise.
The third, and most disturbing, thing we noticed was the amount of litter to be found in the towns, on the beaches and alongside access roads. To be fair to some communities, local residents organise litter-picking parties on a regular basis, but this only relieves the problem for a few days! Some of the beaches did have well-sited litter bins but many holidaymakers ignored them or they were overflowing because the local authorities weren’t emptying them often enough.
Dropping litter is illegal and perpetrators can be fined – although this is a rare event. We are very fortunate in Edwinstowe in having the Edwinstowe Litter Picking Patrol (ELPP), who have been doing a great job for over four years – but it shouldn’t be necessary!
I was so moved by the litter issue on beaches that I wrote the following rhyme – in the hope of raising awareness:
A Beachcomber’s Lament
A solitary flip-flop, some tangled fishing line
A rusty ‘Diet Coke’ tin, an empty bottle of wine
Discarded cigarette butts, a cardboard pizza box
Some lumps of polystyrene wedged between two rocks
A plastic bottle cluster, a burned out barbecue
A tube of suntan lotion, a bag of doggy poo
Some twisted copper piping, a soggy ankle sock
An empty can of ‘Fosters’, a broken shuttlecock
A length of rubber tubing, a can of camping gas
Some orange fishing netting, and shards of broken glass
A string-less tennis racket and half a cricket bat
Some plastic bags and bottles, a floating floppy hat
An empty cup of coffee, some ragged neoprene
A wheel-less shopping trolley, some yellow polythene
A desiccated starfish, a clump of nylon twine
An empty condom packet, ‘Keep Beach Tidy’ signs!
Steve, Edwinstowe